126 KNIGHTHOOD
tion in the mode of warfare which had commenced under Edward III. was completed under Henry VIII., and it was on their infantry and artillery rather than on their cavalry that commanders had come principally to rely. Knights still disported themselves in the lists as bravely and gallantly as of old, but neither their arms nor their armour availed them aught against the cannon and muskets they were compelled to encounter in the field. And even in the way of pageantry and martial exercise chivalry was not destined to be of long continuance. In England tilts and tourneys, in which her father had so much excelled, were patronized to the last by Queen Elizabeth, and were even occasionally held until after the death of Henry, Prince of Wales. But on the Continent the Comte de Montgomerie's lance proved as fatal to them as it did to the French king Henry at Paris. By that time, however, chivalry had ceased to exist as a social institution as well as a military régime. Its standard of conduct, the code of honour, indeed remained as it in some measure still remains, the test of propriety and the guide of manners in the higher ranks of society all over Europe. Its merits and defects. But the order of knighthood as an order formally and particularly dedicated to the service of "God and the Ladies," – "I blush," says Gibbon," to unite such discordant names," – and bound by solemn and express engagements to vindicate justice, to avenge wrong, and to defend the weak, the unprotected, and the oppressed, had disappeared. It was under this shape, however, that chivalry manifested itself during the earlier and more vigorous stages of its development, and played its part among the chief and certainly among the most remarkable of those influences which moulded the form and directed the course of Western civilization in mediæval times. The common offspring of feudalism and the church, it derived its resources and its sanctions from each of its parents in turn, and stood forth as at once the spiritual representative of the one and the temporal representative of the other. Whatever may have been its inherent vices and defects, it is at any rate indisputable that it embodied some of the noblest sentiments and engendered many of the worthiest actions of contemporary mankind. It animated poetry and art; it created romance and heraldry; it determined individual ethics, modified the policy of states, and generally inspired the energies while it controlled the destinies of all those nations, especially England and France, which were then as they now are the most enlightened as well as the most powerful in the world. Under ecclesiastical teaching war came to be regarded from a judicial standpoint as, to use the words of Bacon, "the highest trial of right when princes and states that acknowledge no superior on earth shall put themselves upon the justice of God for the deciding of their controversies by such success as it please Him to give on either side."[1] Battles were commenced with religious celebrations, and armies esteemed themselves happy if they marched beneath a consecrated standard. Even in the field and while engaged in mortal conflict Christian knights acknowledged the duties and courtesies of their order. And if they were taken prisoner they could count on consideration from their captors, and on their freedom when they paid their stipulated ransom. Moreover, when they took prisoners they knew that they could safely release them on parole to raise their ransom, and that they would return to captivity if their ransom could not be raised.[2] It is indeed from the customs of chivalry that the best and most humane portions of the laws of war in so far as actual combatants are concerned have their origin. But war, although it was the principal, was not the exclusive or the continuous occupation of medieval knighthood. When not in the camp the home of the knight was in the court or the castle, and it was there that his prowess in the past campaign or present tournament was rewarded, often it might be rather generously than discreetly by the ladies in whose cause he was partly enrolled. Hence, although at no period were women held in greater outward respect by men, it is probable that at no period did more licence in the association of the sexes prevail; and it is a strange comment on the manners of the times that the single word "gallantry" should have grown to signify both bravery and illicit love.[3] But, if chastity was not among the cardinal virtues of chivalry, the catalogue of them included valour, loyalty, courtesy, and munificence; and, had they been practised with the zeal with which they were inculcated, they would have gone far towards redeeming the dissoluteness of private manners with which they were connected. Valour was of course the primary qualification of a knight, and the imputation of cowardice the most damaging that could be cast upon him. But loyalty, which implied the strictest fidelity to all his engagements to his sovereign or lord, his "lady love," and his friends and foes alike, was only second to it in importance. Next came courtesy, which meant not only ceremonious politeness but also spontaneous modesty of carriage, self-denial, and careful respect for the feelings of others. And last came munificence, a disdain for money, readiness to relieve want and reward services, hospitality, and liberality in all things. In a celebrated passage Burke describes chivalry as "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise." "Never never more," he says, "shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart which kept alive even in servitude itself the spirit of an exalted freedom;" and, he adds, "that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness."[4] A very different estimate of chivalry is expressed by Mr Freeman. "The chivalrous spirit," he contends, "is above all things a class spirit. The good knight is bound to endless fantastic courtesies towards men and still more towards women of a certain rank; he may treat all below that rank with any degree of scorn and cruelty. The spirit of chivalry implies the arbitrary choice of one or two virtues to be practised in such an exaggerated degree as to become vices, while the ordinary laws of right and wrong are forgotten. The false code of honour supplants the laws of the commonwealth, the law of God, and the eternal principles of right. Chivalry again in its military aspect not only encourages the love of war for its own sake without regard to the cause for which war is waged, it encourages also an extravagant regard for a fantastic show of personal daring which cannot in any way advance the objects of the siege or campaign which is going on. Chivalry in short is in morals very much what feudalism is in law: each substitutes purely personal obligations, obligations devised in the interests of an exclusive class, for the more homely duties of an honest man and a good citizen."[5] Between these two views, – which, indeed, may be taken to represent the extremes of praise and of depreciation, – it may be assumed that at all events an approximation to the truth concerning the ethical effects of chivalry or knighthood is somewhere to be found. (F. DR.)
- ↑ "Observations on a Libel," Works, vol. v. p. 384.
- ↑ Sainte Palaye, Mémoires, vol. i. pp. 309 and 364; Mills, History of Chivalry, vol. i. p. 136; Grose, Military Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 343 sq.
- ↑ Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 398.
- ↑ Burke, French Revolution, p. 113, ed. 1790.
- ↑ Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. v. p. 482.
